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cosmolinguistToday I found myself thinking about the word queue and how great it is.
It's great because it's just one letter, really, and onto this poor unsuspecting q are added a rather extraneous u and e. And then, after that, for reasons I can't explain, another u and e! Why? It must be because it's British. That's the only explanation I can think of.
Because it is a British word, I'm sure of it. I might just think this because my countrymen will say they're standing in a line instead of in a queue, but I think it's also because the queue is a phenomenon unto itself here in a way that lines never are for the people who stand in them.
I mean, last week I read about some guy who beat up another guy he recognized as having recently commited the cadrinal sin of Queue Jumping. Imagine! He just saw this guy in the street and pummeled him until he had to pay a couple hundred quid in reparations. I don't think that sort of thing happens where people stand in lines.
But such fervent dedication to an ideal like queuing sounds very British to me. Especially when you add in the extraneous-vowel factor...
It's great because it's just one letter, really, and onto this poor unsuspecting q are added a rather extraneous u and e. And then, after that, for reasons I can't explain, another u and e! Why? It must be because it's British. That's the only explanation I can think of.
Because it is a British word, I'm sure of it. I might just think this because my countrymen will say they're standing in a line instead of in a queue, but I think it's also because the queue is a phenomenon unto itself here in a way that lines never are for the people who stand in them.
I mean, last week I read about some guy who beat up another guy he recognized as having recently commited the cadrinal sin of Queue Jumping. Imagine! He just saw this guy in the street and pummeled him until he had to pay a couple hundred quid in reparations. I don't think that sort of thing happens where people stand in lines.
But such fervent dedication to an ideal like queuing sounds very British to me. Especially when you add in the extraneous-vowel factor...